Alas! they had been friends in youth;But whispering tongues can poison truth,And constancy live in realms above;And life is thorny, and youth is vain,And to be wroth with one we loveDoth work like madness in the brain.

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,Drops his blue-fringd lids, and holds them close,And hooting at the glorious sun in heavenCries out, Where is it?

It sounds like stories from the laud of spiritsIf any man obtains that which he merits,Or any merit that which he obtains. . . . . . . . . .Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!Hath he not always treasures, always friends,The good great man? Three treasures,love and light,And calm thoughts, regular as infants breath;And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.

The intelligible forms of ancient poets,The fair humanities of old religion,The power, the beauty, and the majestyThat had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,Or chasms and watery depths,all these have vanished;They live no longer in the faith of reason.

An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat countries, with spire steeples, which, as they cannot be referred to any other object, point as with silent finger to the sky and star.9

Note 10.Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.Percy Bysshe Shelley: Fragments of Adonais.